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Articles

Ain't This America. . . Support the Right to Arm Bears

From Capitol Hill Blue (Capitol Hill Blue is a not-for-profit,
non-commercial experiment in on-line journalism published by The Save
America Foundation. For more information
www.capitolhillblue.com )

By BONNIE ERBE
Nov 1, 2005, 00:30

Last week's local section of The Washington Post celebrated -- yes,
celebrated -- the killing of a black bear by an 8-year-old girl. The
compassionate among us mourned not just the cruel and completely unnecessary
killing of one of nature's most fabulous creatures, but the love of violence
and destruction instilled in this child by her family.

That certain Americans sadly find valor in killing is beyond doubt. But
in many ways, it's also beyond belief. That they would take pleasure in a
wantonly destructive act and train this into an 8-year-old female heart is
beyond forgiveness.

We've heard it all before. Hunters love nature. Hunters work to preserve
wildlife. Hunters are great stewards of the environment. Hunters eat what
they kill. What was the justification here? That enough bears exist in
Maryland to kill them off without destroying the species, as mankind once
almost did. Only cowards could find solace, justification and pride in that.

There's no sport in taking down a large, lumbering animal with a .243
caliber rifle, the kind used by the young girl portrayed in worshipful prose
by the Post. That's the same caliber weapon NATO uses in its assault
weapons. There's more technology than sport in today's high-powered, scoped
weapons. (The Post did not report whether the rifle she used was scoped or
not.)

I've sat in the Maryland woods and watched deer saunter by, totally
unaffected by my presence. I've watched grizzlies, mothers and cubs, in
Alaska's Denali National Park. If destruction of their lives had been my
goal, the task would have been simple. Nothing to laud, any more than the
lauding of fecklessness itself.

A week or so ago, I drove down a dirt road through a 200-acre farm along
the Chesapeake Bay. I passed two hunters, all dressed up in fatigues, rifles
in hand, apparently waiting for some prey to pass close by. They looked more
like overgrown school boys in arrested development than men.

Despite all this, the Post described the state's first bear kill of the
season in glorified terms: "There's a new hunting legend in the mountains of
Western Maryland. Born to the woods, she's 4 1/2 feet tall and 8 years old,
with a shock of light brown hair and a steady trigger finger that put two
bullets into a black bear's chest cavity Monday, according to her and her
father and granduncle, who were hunting with her."

That her family's prideful recitation of the facts included the nugget
she "skipped school" to take part in the hunt clues us into their hierarchy
of values: fake machismo over education. Sad, sad, sad.

Perhaps because there are few satisfying wars to fight anymore (what true
war hero would stack, for example, Iraq up against World War II?), the
testosterone-challenged among us now need to vent their need to destroy one
of nature's most stunning creations. It's sad enough when that false sense
of power is visited on boys. It's sadder still when it's foisted on young
girls.

It's almost as horrific as the latest blend of technology and feckless
machismo: Internet hunting. Some skewed mind devised a system that mounts a
rifle and a camera onto a platform pointed at caged creatures. With a click
of a computer mouse, "bang, bang" and the creature is destroyed. Congress is
considering a bill (and so are several states, including Texas, Michigan and
Minnesota) that would ban the interstate practice of same, which proponents
defend as a way of allowing the disabled to hunt. Methinks the disabled have
more important things to do.

There's a special place in the afterlife for worshipers of the cruel, for
those who feign strength by destroying life.

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